Birth and migration of scientists: Does religiosity matter? Evidence from 19th-century France

Giampaolo Lecce, Laura Ogliari and Mara P. Squicciarini

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2021, vol. 187, issue C, 274-289

Abstract: Can religiosity affect the emergence and migration patterns of scientists? We focus on 19th-century France, a period in which the Catholic Church had embraced a particularly antiscientific attitude, and we exploit variation in intensity of Catholicism. Using data on the places of birth and death of famous individuals from 1790 to 1880, we show that more religious cantons were less likely to give birth to scientists, but religiosity did not play a role for their migration choices. We shed light on the mechanism and suggest that accumulation of scientific human capital earlier in life was key: religious vs. secular secondary education can partly explain the negative relationship between religiosity and the “birth” of scientists. Finally, placebo regressions show that religiosity is not associated with the birth and migration patterns of famous individuals in nonscientific professions.

Keywords: Religiosity; Scientific development; Upper-tail human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 N13 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268121001724
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Birth and Migration of Scientists: Does Religiosity Matter? Evidence from 19th-Century France (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:187:y:2021:i:c:p:274-289

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.04.025

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().